


Cupid's Labyrinth

by DameRuth



Series: The L-Space Trilogy [3]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crack, Crossover, F/M, Humor, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:13:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25247440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: The last story in the L-Space Trilogy.  The Discworld crossover continues; sequel to "Interlibrary Loan" and "Bananas."[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2007.12.27. While on the subject of Terry Pratchett, if you like my DameRuth writing, and also like Good Omens, I've written - and am continuing to write - some fic for the latter over on myargyle4evapseud, so I'll put a plug for that here.]
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Series: The L-Space Trilogy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829134
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Cupid's Labyrinth

**Author's Note:**

> This time, blame Unseen_Watcher and butterflyborn, who both tossed the same bunny at me within a few minutes' time (projectile bunnies are especially hard to resist, you see) . . . and with a Special Guest Star _a la_ Kyanii's request.
> 
> Okay, NOW I will go write some more on "Second Gifts." It's amazingly hard to write mild angst when one's mind keeps drifting to bananas . . .

Rose stood on the sidewalk and took long, deep breaths. A few passers-by glanced at her with vague curiosity — a well-dressed, pretty young woman (even if she was clearly bottle-blond and wearing too much makeup) staring fixedly at a door with a little bell tied to it wasn’t a common sight in this part of town. It wasn’t a bad part of town, really — more misunderstood — but it wasn’t classy, either.  
  
Rose rolled her neck to ease tension and stopped halfway through, staring at the sky and the drifting Zeppelins high above. _Right, time to do this,_ she thought firmly to herself, and without giving herself time to think, stepped forward and opened the door. The little bell jingled sweetly.  
  
The minute she saw the bookshop’s proprietor she knew she had it nailed. Small, wizened, bald, genderless, and slightly warty: someone who might be accepted as human by default, but only after a moment's serious consideration. Carpet slippers, bathrobe . . . and sunglasses -- indoors, in a room that practically needed night-vision goggles for the titles of the amassed books to be readable.  
  
“Yes, can I _help_ you?” the proprietor asked, in a thin, reedy voice. Customer service did not sound like it had a high priority here.  
  
Fighting back a grin, Rose realized she was staring. “Could be,” she said, trying to radiate confidence and just a hint of the blasé-heiress attitude she'd learned to adopt as Pete Tyler’s daughter. “I’m looking for something special . . . in the back.”  
  
She held her breath then, and hoped the password she’d come across in Torchwood’s archives would actually work.  
  
“Indeed,” the proprietor said, attention sharpening. The sunglasses were slipped off, revealing slit-pupilled eyes with violet irises. “You’re own your own, once you get back there, you realize. My insurance won’t cover a search party.”  
  
“I know what I’m doing,” Rose said, hoping the confidence she put into the words would make them true.  
  
“Well, then.” The sunglasses went back on. “Past the cookbooks, left turn at Poetry, go straight on and then hang a right at Military History. Thoth have mercy on your soul.”  
  
Rose nodded her thanks, and began to wend along the path indicated, careful not to dislodge anything from the leaning piles reaching above her head. She’d already tried this unsuccessfully at any number of libraries and bookstores. The threshold into L-Space had remained elusive, to her (silent, Libraries being involved) screaming frustration. If this one didn’t work, she was nearly out of options . . .  
  
_No._ She wasn’t. She’d go to every collection of books on this Earth, if she had to. It was the gateway, she was sure of it. Five years of digging, researching, and shamelessly diverting Torchwood’s resources as necessary . . . it _would_ work. She had it all set — if she was gone for longer than a few days, letters would be delivered to her family and friends, along with instructions for her few personal possessions, and reassurances that she was just fine, and where she belonged.  
  
Possibly that was overly-optimistic of her. There were a lot of reasons for her not to come back that had nothing with being where she wanted to be . . . but she wasn’t about to tell her mum and dad and little sister that. Mickey would know — but Mickey would understand, too. He was a good friend. She’d miss him, but she missed the Doctor more.  
  
She spotted the age-faded, hand-lettered sign, _Military History_ , hanging forlornly from a shelf by a single thumbtack, the other long since popped loose. She turned right, unhesitating, and things . . . changed. It looked like yet another aisle packed with books, but this one stretched in front of her in a straight line at least a hundred yards long. There was no way the bookshop she’d entered could contain it.  
  
After that, it was walking, more walking and trying to trust what instincts she could summon. It got darker, then brighter. The air went sulfurous, then smoky, and then developed a texture she couldn’t describe. The shelves around her got taller and shorter by turns, and changed materials frequently — stone, steel, wood, iron and ivory. The books changed binding styles and languages with nearly every step, and she started keeping a wary eye on the floor after her foot sank ankle-deep in what had appeared to be solid flagstones.  
  
Through it all, she kept her mind focused on the memory of a particular golden light, and a rare, alien song. There were times when she almost thought she heard it just up ahead, but then it faded away by the time she reached the next corner. Rose bit her lip, and realized she was starting to be scared. She stopped. It was a useful talent she’d learned with the Doctor and refined at Torchwood.  
  
Then there was the hint of something familiar, almost friendly. The air smelt of . . . bananas. The Doctor loved bananas. Encouraged, she picked up her pace, and headed towards the light she could see at the end of the aisle . . .  
  
\--  
  
The Librarian looked up from where he was using good white glue to shore up a separating book spine, and blinked at the sight of the young woman emerging from behind a shelf of books. _Not_ something one saw often at Unseen University — either the _young_ , or the _woman._  
  
She looked nervously around, as if confused, but her face brightened with a smile when she saw the Librarian. She began walking towards him with confidence. The Librarian would have assumed she’d mistaken him for someone else if that wasn’t patently impossible.  
  
“Am I _ever_ glad to see you!” she told him, with a bright, open grin that nearly made him forget his species. “You’re the Doctor’s friend. You borrow books from his Library.”  
  
Ah. Remove a few years, lengthen the hair, muss up the clothing a little, widen the eyes, have her levitating out of a chair in surprise and flinging books about — yes, he knew who she was. So that was the brown-suited man’s name: the Doctor.  
  
The Librarian approved.  
  
“Can you tell me how to get there?” she asked, and her eyes were wide and pleading, suddenly desperately serious.  
  
“Ook.” The Librarian found himself making a futile attempt to stand straighter. He closed the glue bottle carefully, made sure the book binding he’d been working on was properly braced to dry straight, and then hopped down off his desk.  
  
“Ook,” he added, beckoning. She followed him eagerly down the familiar twists and turns, showing not the slightest fear as they brushed the edges of L-Space. Remarkable. She walked through warped dimensions of time and space like an old hand and read books (albeit trashy ones) for entertainment. The Librarian could see why losing her would drive a man to bananas.  
  
Finally, they reached the last turning. The Librarian stopped. It wasn’t good to cross the boundaries of universes unless one had a jolly good reason to (such as needing to borrow a particular book), thanks to little things like matter-antimatter imbalances, temporospatial paradoxes, random energy fluxes, and the risk of a bad case of hives.  
  
“Ook. Eek. Ook.” It was a veritable speech for him, and again to her credit, she followed along perfectly.  
  
“Thanks,” she told him, her face alight, and offered her hand for a quick, firm shake. Then she turned and practically sprinted for the Library she sought.  
  
The Librarian grinned as he knuckled back to his desk. A happy ending like this called for bananas all around — and if he was the only one in the Library to partake, so much the better.  
  
\--  
  
Rose shook the Librarian’s hand (which felt like a bundle of sticks in a leather glove), and took off running.  
  
By the third step, she could hear a faint, familiar hum.  
  
By the sixth step, she was seeing titles in English.  
  
With the tenth step, she rounded the corner of the shelf, and saw a ratty old red-velvet wingback chair. She dropped to her knees on the seat of it and hugged it as hard as she could, laughing and crying at the same time. When she’d worked most of the first round of emotion off, she straightened, sniffed and, still kneeling on the chair, pulled her compact from her pocket and fixed her makeup very, every carefully.  
  
Then she stood up gracefully and walked calmly to the door. Once she was in the corridor, however, she lost all of her self-possession, and instead bolted for the control room.  
  
She burst through the door, and there was her heart’s desire and her journey’s end — a pair of bright red trainers poking out from under the console.  
  
“Doctor!” she yelled, completely unable to stick with the mature and subtle reunion script she’d carried for years in her head.  
  
There was a _thump_ and an “ow!” followed by an muffled and irritated, “Blimey, Rose how many times have I told you not to yell at me like that . . .!” A moment of absolute silence ensued. Then:  
  
“ _Rose?!?!?_ ” the Doctor screamed, voice rising markedly in both pitch and decibel level. He wriggled out from under the console, a complicated, frantic flailing of long skinny limbs and long skinny torso, ending with the Doctor staring up at her from flat on his back with an expression of blowfish wonder on his face. Calling his hair a rat’s nest would have put rats everywhere to shame, and one of the earpieces of his spectacles had slipped loose.  
  
Disorganized and cockeyed as he was, Rose had never seen anything so wonderful. “Miss me?” she asked, catching her tongue between her teeth and knowing the answer even before she heard it.  
  
She’d forgotten how quickly he could move. Somehow, with no apparent intervening steps, she had a jubilant Time Lord wrapped around her and lifting her in the air, while both of them laughed like loons. Or hyenas. Or some other animal with vast reserves of mirth.  
  
He finally set her down and just looked at her, beaming his open-mouthed grin, absently slipping the earpiece of his spectacles back into place.  
  
“Rose Tyler,” he said, his voice gone to warm velvet. “You’ll teach me to stop saying ‘impossible’ yet.”  
  
“You just said it,” she pointed out, teasing.  
  
His eyes darkened, and he said, quietly. “But I didn’t say it, did I? So this time, I’ll do it properly.”  
  
Rose smiled in anticipation, and gazed up into his solemn face, loving every detail of it — the rising red bump on his forehead included.  
  
“Rose Tyler . . . _what in the seven frozen hells is_ that _??_ ”  
  
Rose blinked, smile fading. “What?” she asked. Those were definitely not the words she’d crossed universes to hear.  
  
“That!” the Doctor repeated, unwrapping one arm from around her and pointing behind her. Rose twisted to glance over her shoulder.  
  
Balancing on the TARDIS’s metal deck grating was something resembling a large leather suitcase — except that suitcases usually didn’t sport that many legs. Or teeth. Rose couldn’t see any eyes, but she somehow got the impression that she was being looked at . . . hungrily.  
  
“I’m not sure,” she murmured, “but I think we’d better . . . _run_!” She grabbed his hand and by mutual consent, they took off down the corridor at full speed, pursued closely by the Luggage.  
  
For its part, the Luggage was as amused as Luggage ever got. It had a feeling it was going to like this Universe.  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=17911>


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